Did I kill my Yeast Starter?

So, I made a brew tonight. And it was my first time using liquid yeast instead of dry yeast. Last night, I made a starter, with 1 pint of water and 1/2c. of DME in a wine bottle. Here is the thing... I put it in my closet, which I thought was a steady 65 degrees. Today I go in there and it seems an awful lot warmer than usual. I check, and it is 80 degrees. I have not pitched my yeast yet, as my wort is cooling. Should I even try to pitch this starter, or is it lost?

Your yeast is okay, but I'd decant as much of the 'beer' as possible before I pitched. It's all full of esthers.

Excellent, thanks. I decanted off what I could, but it wasnt a lot. Hopefully the wonderful little yeasties will feast to their hearts' contents and all will be good. I will take a gravity reading in a week, and see where we are at...

oberon567 said:

So, I made a brew tonight. And it was my first time using liquid yeast instead of dry yeast. Last night, I made a starter, with 1 pint of water and 1/2c. of DME in a wine bottle. Here is the thing... I put it in my closet, which I thought was a steady 65 degrees. Today I go in there and it seems an awful lot warmer than usual. I check, and it is 80 degrees. I have not pitched my yeast yet, as my wort is cooling. Should I even try to pitch this starter, or is it lost?

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The starter should be fine - yeast doesn't get killed off until you expose it to pretty high temperatures (upper 90s or so, if I recall correctly).

I was just wondering what were you trying to achieve with a pint-sized starter? It's probably too small to achieve significant, if any, propagation, and according to several interviews by the Wyeast/White Labs folks I have listened to, too-small starters may even weaken the yeast if you don't pitch it at peak activity after a few hours.

If you just wanted to "wake it up" to reduce lag time, your procedure works fine, although smacking a Wyeast pack will achieve pretty much the same thing. You would pitch the whole thing at peak activity after a few hours, which is why you may want to consider lightly hopping such mini-starters in the future (the amount pitched is too small to cause serious off-flavors in a five gallon batch, but I sometimes do it just to be safe).

If you want to propagate your yeast (i.e. increase the cell count), you'll want to use larger starters. In that case it's common practice to encourage the yeast to settle and decant the supernate prior to pitching to avoid off-flavors.

One of the guys who works at my LHBS told me to boil 1 pint of water and add 1/2c. DME for 5-10 mins, drop it ina sanitized wine bottle and cool it down to 60-70, shake the White labs yeast, throw it in, let it go for 24 hours, shake it again and pitch it into my wort.

It was my first time using liquid yeast, and I was just following his advice. He said the White Labs didnt actually have a high enough yeast count for a 5 gallon brew, so this would jumpstart the yeast and ensure a good fermentation.

I am brewing another batch on Sunday, and was going to start my yeast tomorrow in preparation. What quantities of water and sugar should I use? (I am going to be brewing an imperial stout, LOTS of fermentables in it. Using White Labs 007). Thanks!

oberon567 said:

One of the guys who works at my LHBS told me to boil 1 pint of water and add 1/2c. DME for 5-10 mins, drop it ina sanitized wine bottle and cool it down to 60-70, shake the White labs yeast, throw it in, let it go for 24 hours, shake it again and pitch it into my wort.

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That works, especially for White Labs vials if you want to wake the yeasts up and make sure they are alive. I probably wouldn't wait quite as long as 24 hours because they may actually get close to finishing the fermentation at that point.

It was my first time using liquid yeast, and I was just following his advice. He said the White Labs didnt actually have a high enough yeast count for a 5 gallon brew, so this would jumpstart the yeast and ensure a good fermentation.

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Whether or not a single vial is sufficient depends on the OG of your beer, what flavor intensity you want to get out of the yeast, and the health of the yeast in the vial. The advice you'll get on this will be diverse and sometimes inconsistent. But again, you don't get much propagation until you make starters in the 1-2 liter range.

I am brewing another batch on Sunday, and was going to start my yeast tomorrow in preparation. What quantities of water and sugar should I use? (I am going to be brewing an imperial stout, LOTS of fermentables in it. Using White Labs 007). Thanks!

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Jamil Zainasheff is an advocate of pitching fairly large amounts of yeast. You can use his pitch rate calculator at http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html to get a general idea of how large a starter you will need to achieve sufficient propagation for your kit.

I want to reiterate that we are talking about two different types of starters.

1.) Getting yeast "woken up" and their metabolism started (small wort volume, pitched at peak activity after a few hours, pitch entire volume of starter), and

2.) Propagating yeast (large volume of wort, allowing it to ferment close to or all the way to completion, encourage yeast to flocculate and decant supernate)

Thanks for the clarification. My batch tomorrow is going to be an Imperial Stout with an estimated OG of 1.091. I am not really sure I understand what that calculator is telling me. It is saying I need 2 vials with a starter, and I need a 2.9 liter starter. Well, I only have 1 vial. And if I do a starter that large, how much DME should I put in there? For starters of any size is there a general rule concerning the gravity of the starter? (What is the general rule from DME/liter for a starter?)

To top it off, it is 10pm now, so I will be off to bed soon. If I want to do a larger starter and let it flocculate I am going to need to do it soon. If i want to do a smaller one obviously I can let it wait until tomorrow. Any advice would be appreciated, I am goign to do some more hunting online in the meantime...

The gravity of as starter should be about 1.030 - 1.040. If you're brewing tomorrow, I think it's a bit late to make a starter and let it flocculate. Much of the yeast will be suspended in the starter. However, you could step up the starter tomorrow AM.
I have found http://maltosefalcons.com/tech/MB_Raines_Guide_to_Yeast_Culturing.php to be an excellent resource on starters.

-a.

Wow, thanks for that site, it is a great resource. Too much to read right now... it has been a long day and there is an early AM drive awaiting me... I will throw a starter together in the AM, so the yeast is nice and active when I pitch it.